


Down

by carolyncaves



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Blood, Gen, Impalement, Noctis Whump, Phoenix Downs, Video Game Mechanics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-09
Updated: 2018-07-09
Packaged: 2019-06-07 13:18:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15219986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carolyncaves/pseuds/carolyncaves
Summary: Stuck halfway down an electrical tower when MTs attack, Noct runs into trouble.(Written for Noct Whump Week free day for the Day 4 prompt Impaled)





	Down

**Author's Note:**

> Probably influenced by [this cool fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15126140) posted earlier in the week by LuxKing (slytherinsdaughter). Featuring my weird phoenix down headcanon, which debuted in [Words of Affirmation](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14549586/chapters/33618678).

The view of Cleigne and Duscae beyond from the top of the electrical tower was stunning. Noctis wished he could show the others. But the platform was small – really only room for one person.

It wasn’t a place to play anyway. The panel behind him kept the lights on that kept everybody safe.

Noctis sighed, allowed himself one more look. Then he started down the ladder. It was a long climb down, and they had two more towers to check.

It was at that moment, when he was fifty feet off the ground and both his hands were really occupied, that an Imperial dropship appeared out of nowhere.

“Noct!” Ignis shouted, far below, but Noctis was a little busy. He drew daggers out of the armiger and dug one into the pole to stabilize himself. The MTs had spotted him on the tower, and instead of pouring out onto the ground, they clustered around the lip of their ship. A couple of them had harpoon guns.

His least favorite.

If he was on the ground he’d warp at them and take them down one by one. He was going to do that now, too. He’d just have to be careful to stay in warp range of the pole, avoid stasis, and keep himself from getting dragged into the mouth of that ship. Fun.

He warped toward them and knocked the first one off the hatch with a sweep of his dagger. Noctis could hear the guys finishing it off below as he flashed back to the ladder to reorient for the next strike.

He reappeared in time to see an MT in midair, silhouetted against the black maw of the drop ship, leaping across the open space between them with weapon raised. It drove its massive sword through his stomach.

Pain burst through him and he lost his grip on the ladder. He didn’t fall. He was stuck. The blade had skewered him to the pole.

There was noise. Yelling. Noctis couldn’t tell if it was coming from him or his friends below. Maybe both. The MT hung from its sword, clawing at him. He put his dagger through its eye and it dropped away from him. The MTs on the ship were moving, preparing to take a killing shot.

An explosion of lightning. Someone had lobbed a thundara flask through the open hatch of the ship. It drifted sideways, then fell smoking into a stand of trees, leaving nothing but empty sky.

Noctis couldn’t breathe. All his weight was crashing down on the blade where it stuck through him. It was excruciating. He tried to hold onto the ladder, onto the blade itself, but his hands were slick with blood and his arms were shaking. It cut into him, widening the wound as he struggled.

“Noctis,” Ignis called. He sounded so far away. “Use a phoenix down on yourself.”

“But, but …” Noctis couldn’t talk, couldn’t think.

“You must maintain consciousness until Glaido can reach you. You will need to help him.”

“Ignis,” Noct whimpered.

“Immediately, Noct!”

Noctis tried to focus on accessing the armiger. The feather appeared in his hands. It was immediately crumpled and clumped in his grip.

Then flames raced through his body, ignited his blood. The pain instantly receded to an ignorable level. He was still bleeding, the blade still cut into him, but his muscles were steady and strong. He got his feet back on the ladder, curled one hand around a rung above his head, to take some of his weight off the blade.

He took one deep breath, then another.

The ladder jostled – he noticed the pain, but it didn’t faze him – and then Gladio was climbing up the edge of the ladder, moving carefully around Noctis’ pinned body until their heads were level.

Gladio’s face was twisted in to a grimace. “I’m gonna get you down, Noct, okay? Put your arm around my neck.”

Noctis tried. Moving was starting to get hard again, the pain piercing the fervor of the down. He let out a low moan.

Gladio’s hand snaked through the ladder from behind, gripping Noctis under his arm like a vice. “You gotta be holding onto me when I pull it out, Noct, or you’ll fall. Hurry up, damn it, while you can.

The phoenix fire wouldn’t keep him going forever. How long had it been since he’d used the down? Noctis couldn’t tell. He took a heaving breath, braced himself, managed to hook his free arm around the back of Gladio’s neck.

Between one second and the next, the phoenix down wore off.

Noctis had no sense of reality. The sky was blinding and he hurt and the ground was missing, like a video game where the level hadn’t loaded right. But Gladio’s voice was rough in his ear, so he didn’t worry about it. Gladio would take care of him.

Then something started to move in his gut and he screamed, because everything was pain and pain and pain and darkness …

And then he caught on fire again, and he was all right.

They were on a ladder on an electrical tower in Cleigne. He was clinging to Gladio. Gladio was holding him up. The sword that was through him was gone. Gladio must have pulled it out.

“Let’s hug on the ground,” Gladio said. “If you’re not at the bottom of the ladder when the phoenix down drops you, we’re gonna have a whole new problem.”

“Right.” Noctis grabbed the bars, and Gladio let him go. He used the false strength flowing through his veins to start climbing, as fast as he safely could. Noctis was very familiar with what came next. Or, he thought he was. He’d never had to use two phoenix downs back to back. None of them had.

Noctis was five rungs up when his strings were cut. He fell the rest of the way. The hard earth jarred his legs, and he crumpled to the ground. Then Ignis had him, like he always did.

Prompto was on his knees at his side. “Oh my gosh, Noct …” His face was flushed and streaked with tears.

Somehow seeing that Prompto was crying was what made Noctis start to sob.

“It’s all right,” Ignis said, and his hand pushed up Noctis’ ruined shirt and pressed over his stomach. It felt bruised and raw from the magic, but he wasn’t hurt. “You’re all right, see? You’re all right.”

Was he? He was shaking everywhere.

Then Gladio was pulling him out of Ignis’ arms. He held him so tight he couldn’t shake anymore. He was so tired.

“Noct,” Gladio said, “you’re crashing from the phoenix downs. I want you to pass out if you can. When you wake up, you’ll feel better and we’ll be far away from here.”

Those both sounded good, so Noctis did just that.

\---------

Gladio held Noct’s head in his lap as the Regalia hummed toward Lestallum. His king was a mess. His own sticky blood was all over him – it covered his abdomen, sure, had saturated his shirt, but drawing the sword out had dumped buckets of it. It had flowed down him and soaked through his pants. One of his shoes was ruined. His face was smeared and splattered with it. His hands …

Gladio gathered those two hands into his own. They trembled a little, even though Noctis was out cold.

His and Noct’s hands were both coated in it. In Noct’s red blood.

Gladio had to get it off him. Off Noctis, off himself. It shouldn’t be there, on the outside of them. Not ever.

Not if Gladio was doing his job right.

\---------

“He’s perfectly fine,” Ignis told the clerk at the Leville. “He simply needs to be cleaned up. As always, we’ll use care and pay for anything we ruin.”

The clerk looked a little pale at the sight of Noctis dangling limply in Gladio’s arms, but he handed Ignis their customary key.

Ignis fumbled it, then gripped it tightly to compensate. If he were forced to guess, he probably looked a little pale himself.

Noct’s screams had jarred him. Quite badly. It had taken everything in Ignis to keep his eyes firmly on the road for the past two hours. All he’d wanted to do was to climb into the back seat and examine every inch of Noctis to reassure himself that he was absolutely all right.

\---------

Prompto lay on the bed beside Noct, an arm curled protectively over him. Noct hadn’t stirred at all while they’d wiped him down, hadn’t even twitched as they’d manhandled him into his clean pajamas. That was normal for phoenix downs, that bone-deep sleep. Prompto had felt it himself. He still didn’t like it.

Gladio had ducked into the bathroom to ‘rinse off real quick’ almost an hour ago. The water was still running. Ignis had stepped out onto the balcony to ‘get some air’, which Prompto had learned early on was code for ‘smoke one of the cigarettes I think nobody knows about’.

Prompto didn’t know how he was ever going to let Noct get more than two feet away from him ever again. He’d felt so helpless he wanted to die, watching Noct struggle, pinned to the tower like a squirming bug. He’d thrown up in a bush, afterward.

He pulled Noct closer, burrowed them deeper into the sheets, and waited for Noct to wake up.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! <3
> 
> Feel free to come talk to me over on tumblr [@carolyncaves](https://carolyncaves.tumblr.com/).


End file.
